Wednesday, February 10, 2010

One of the great things about being part of the ongoing Man-cession is that it gives old, fat, white guys like us plenty of time to read Georgia's political news and dig around a little when we see or read something that just doesn't smell right. That happened today over at the Political Insider when Big Jim Galloway put up a post about a dig that Appropriations Committee chairman Ben Harbin leveled at Ex-SecState Karen Handel for failing to follow instructions from the Legislature and her boy Sonny about furloughing staff members for 6 days to address budget problems here in Georgia.

The gist of Big Jim's post was that Karen had found a way to cut 20% of the SecState budget without furloughs so she did not have to comply with the furlough plan. What Big Jim missed was that she got there by firing 38 of the 450 staff over at the SecState's office. Lopping off 8% of your payroll does wonders for the bottom line, but damn little for those people that lost their "safe" state jobs.

If Karen had complied with the Governors and Legislature's request to furlough 450 employees for 6 days that would have amounted to 2700 unpaid days for those staffers but they would still have jobs. By firing 38 of her staff she generated 9500 unpaid staff days and tossed those workers out on their keisters in the middle of the worst economic climate in Georgia in the last 20 years. Nice.

And the new SecState Brian Kemp, has agreed to take the 6 furlough days that Karen said no to, only he's not going to spread it out over 12 months. He's gonna do it between now and July 1.

So the question is, what's more ethical, asking everyone to tighten their belts for a year and keeping the crew intact or telling 38 of your employees to walk the plank?

1 comment:

Let's see, 2700 unpaid days temporarily or cutting 38 people out of government permanently. I don't see a problem with this. It should be happening on a huge scale at all levels of government. BTW, I'm no Karen Handel fan but this certainly goes in the positive column for her.